Nikon D200 + Nikkor 70-200mm f/2.8 @ 200 mm — ¹/500 sec, f/6.3, ISO 200 — map & image data — nearby photos
First Cherry Blossom
Kyoto, Japan  ·  Spring 2008

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Well, at least the first that I've noticed. Returning from a trip to the store around 2pm, I noticed a few blossoms on the trees near my place. It's just in time, too, because as I noted in the last couple of posts, the plum blossoms have started to wane. So, I grabbed a few snapshots of them, and even turned a couple of ones with blue sky in the background into desktop backgrounds....

Nikon D200 + Nikkor 70-200mm f/2.8 @ 200 mm — ¹/750 sec, f/4.5, ISO 320 — map & image data — nearby photos

Nikon D200 + Nikkor 70-200mm f/2.8 @ 102 mm — ¹/320 sec, f/8, ISO 200 — map & image data — nearby photos
Most Trees Still Like This

Using the time-lapse sequence I made last year as a guide, it seems that these trees have started to bloom about one day earlier than last year.

Nikon D200 + Nikkor 70-200mm f/2.8 @ 150 mm — ¹/3200 sec, f/2.8, ISO 320 — map & image data — nearby photos

Nikon D200 + Nikkor 70-200mm f/2.8 @ 200 mm — ¹/800 sec, f/5.6, ISO 200 — map & image data — nearby photos

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Nikon D200 + Nikkor 17-55mm f/2.8 @ 55 mm — ¹/125 sec, f/5.6, ISO 640 — map & image data — nearby photos
Last Stragglers

Since we still don't have any cherry blossoms yet, at least in my part of Kyoto (although the first ones should start popping out soon), I'll finish up with the pics from yesterday's trip to see what remains of the plum blossoms at the Kitano Tenmangu Shrine.

Yesterday's pictures were from the free areas of the shrine. It costs 600 yen (about six bucks) to visit the gardens, although that includes a bit of plum tea and some crackers. The garden has two parts, a lower part split by a little stream, and an upper plum orchard.

Nikon D200 + Nikkor 17-55mm f/2.8 @ 17 mm — ¹/320 sec, f/3.5, ISO 640 — map & image data — nearby photos
Lower Garden Walk
I imagine that trees laden with blossoms would have added to the appeal of this scene

Nikon D200 + Nikkor 17-55mm f/2.8 @ 55 mm — ¹/90 sec, f/5.6, ISO 640 — map & image data — nearby photos
Upper Orchard
with Anthony pretending to be a running dinosaur

The trees were pretty threadbare, with only a few sprinkles of blossoms on an otherwise bare wood cake (so to speak).

Nikon D200 + Nikkor 17-55mm f/2.8 @ 31 mm — ¹/125 sec, f/5.6, ISO 640 — map & image data — nearby photos
Blacksheep Pink on a White-Plum Branch

Nikon D200 + Nikkor 17-55mm f/2.8 @ 55 mm — ¹/320 sec, f/5.6, ISO 640 — map & image data — nearby photos
Rinse Before Washing

Some of the plum varieties were so fluffy and so deeply saturated with color that they made the fluffy pink cherry blossoms I posted earlier look positively drab.

I don't know what's up with these trees, but they had some seriously misdirected branches...

Nikon D200 + Nikkor 17-55mm f/2.8 @ 38 mm — ¹/500 sec, f/2.8, ISO 640 — map & image data — nearby photos
Meandering
mouseover here to isolate one really crooked branch

This final picture is not pretty, but I find it photographically interesting because it looks as if I used a fill flash to compensate for the bright background (I was facing almost directly up), but no flash was used. I metered the exposure on the non-sky areas, and frankly expected the background to blow out the rest of the image, but it turned out sort of okay.

Nikon D200 + Nikkor 17-55mm f/2.8 @ 45 mm — ¹/60 sec, f/5.6, ISO 640 — map & image data — nearby photos
Clearly, I'm Easily Amused

Nikon D200 + Nikkor 17-55mm f/2.8 @ 55 mm — ¹/80 sec, f/4.5, ISO 500 — map & image data — nearby photos
Plum Blossom Desktop Background

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After Easter mass, we made the 15-minute drive over to Kitano Tenmangu, a Shinto shrine in north-west Kyoto that dates from 947, famous for its pink and white plum blossoms. It was my first visit.

Nikon D200 + Nikkor 17-55mm f/2.8 @ 38 mm — ¹/125 sec, f/5.6, ISO 500 — map & image data — nearby photos
Most Trees Were Like This

We didn't realize just how past their prime the plum blossoms were: the trees were mostly bare. I see now that they have their plum-blossom festival in late February, so we're a month late to the party.

Still, there were a few bunches of blossoms here and there, in deep pink, bleached white, and various colors in between.

Nikon D200 + Nikkor 17-55mm f/2.8 @ 55 mm — ¹/80 sec, f/9, ISO 500 — map & image data — nearby photos
Pure White

I'm sure it's breathtakingly spectacular during full bloom, but the lack of crowds and the resulting relaxed atmosphere that we found today made the blossoms that where there thoroughly enjoyable.

Nikon D200 + Nikkor 17-55mm f/2.8 @ 55 mm — ¹/250 sec, f/5.6, ISO 500 — map & image data — nearby photos
Bride Being Prepped for a Photo Shoot

Nikon D200 + Nikkor 17-55mm f/2.8 @ 55 mm — ¹/250 sec, f/5, ISO 500 — map & image data — nearby photos
Extra Pink

Nikon D200 + Nikkor 17-55mm f/2.8 @ 40 mm — ¹/160 sec, f/7.1, ISO 500 — map & image data — nearby photos
Main Building From a Distance
with mostly-bare plum trees everywhere

Nikon D200 + Nikkor 17-55mm f/2.8 @ 30 mm — ¹/160 sec, f/7.1, ISO 500 — map & image data — nearby photos
Impromptu Family Portrait

Behind us you see what looks like a little bell with a tassel hanging from it; it's actually a couple of feet across, and the rope is as thick as my arm. (Large Shinto shrines have such a bell, used to draw the attention of the gods to your petitions.) Here's a shot of the bell and the detail under the eaves...

Nikon D200 + Nikkor 17-55mm f/2.8 @ 40 mm — ¹/125 sec, f/2.8, ISO 640 — map & image data — nearby photos
Sumptuous

I took that shot with the intent to compare against the eaves of the Tanigumisan Kegonji Temple, a temple which seems too busy doing whatever a temple does to be so pretty. (As for me, my camera enjoys both the sumptuous and the plain.)

Here are a few more nice shots from the main part of the temple. (We also entered the gardens, but pictures from that will have to wait for a different post....)

Nikon D200 + Nikkor 17-55mm f/2.8 @ 55 mm — ¹/320 sec, f/4, ISO 500 — map & image data — nearby photos

Nikon D200 + Nikkor 17-55mm f/2.8 @ 55 mm — ¹/45 sec, f/8, ISO 500 — map & image data — nearby photos

Nikon D200 + Nikkor 17-55mm f/2.8 @ 26 mm — ¹/400 sec, f/4, ISO 500 — map & image data — nearby photos

Nikon D200 + Nikkor 17-55mm f/2.8 @ 34 mm — ¹/250 sec, f/4.5, ISO 800 — map & image data — nearby photos
Spooky Tree

Finally getting around to writing one of the posts I mentioned in Overwhelmed: an Embarrassment of Riches, here's the “spooky tree” that our guide, Hirozou-san, showed us tucked away in a far corner of the small and sparsely populated Kakeroma-jima Island of southern Japan's Amami Island Group in the East China Sea. We visited Amami over the New-Year holiday.

Nikon D200 + Nikkor 17-55mm f/2.8 @ 17 mm — ¹/60 sec, f/7.1, ISO 800 — map & image data — nearby photos
Cluster of Roots Dangling Down

The whole tree seems to be made up of nothing but twisty tangled clumps of aerial roots that drop down to establish new trunks. As time progresses, they get sturdier and become trunks, branching out to start the process again, thus expanding the tree's coverage.

It creates a decidedly haunted-story feeling, both similar and different from the spooky Amami mangroves we would see the next day.

Nikon D200 + Nikkor 17-55mm f/2.8 @ 17 mm — ¹/180 sec, f/4.5, ISO 800 — map & image data — nearby photos
Creepy

Nikon D200 + Nikkor 17-55mm f/2.8 @ 17 mm — ¹/200 sec, f/4.5, ISO 800 — map & image data — nearby photos
Self-Extending Support

Maybe this “expanding coverage” is where Japanese gardeners got the idea for adding supports to tree branches in order to allow them to grow to unnatural lengths, as we've seen many times in passing on this blog (recently here and here).

At some point it becomes difficult to tell whether to consider something a dangling root, or a trunk in its own right...

Nikon D200 + Nikkor 17-55mm f/2.8 @ 55 mm — ¹/60 sec, f/4.5, ISO 800 — map & image data — nearby photos
Trunk/Root/Stem of Some Sort

The sides of the trunks had so many roots glommed onto them that they appeared more like the plumbing on a space-shuttle engine than a tree.

Nikon D200 + Nikkor 85mm f/1.4 — ¹/400 sec, f/1.6, ISO 400 — map & image data — nearby photos

Someone had strung a net up among the roots/trunks (at some point it's hard to tell the difference) to make a hammock, which we took turns bouncing in...

Nikon D200 + Nikkor 17-55mm f/2.8 @ 17 mm — ¹/200 sec, f/4.5, ISO 800 — map & image data — nearby photos

There was also a long rope for swinging on...

Nikon D200 + Nikkor 17-55mm f/2.8 @ 17 mm — ¹/200 sec, f/4.5, ISO 800 — map & image data — nearby photos

Nikon D200 + Nikkor 17-55mm f/2.8 @ 32 mm — ¹/125 sec, f/4.5, ISO 800 — map & image data — nearby photos

It was right on the ocean, so the view was nice...

Nikon D200 + Nikkor 17-55mm f/2.8 @ 23 mm — ¹/125 sec, f/9, ISO 200 — map & image data — nearby photos
View from the Tree

We were there late in the afternoon on a fairly blustery, cloudy day, but before we left we got some of the last rays of the sun peeking through, which made for nice color (that sadly probably doesn't come through unless you're viewing with a color-managed browser on a nice display)...

Nikon D200 + Nikkor 17-55mm f/2.8 @ 18 mm — ¹/160 sec, f/5.6, ISO 200 — map & image data — nearby photos
Spooky, In Warm Tones

Two minutes later, I snapped the sunset picture seen here.

More Amami-related posts are listed in my blog's Amami-Islands Category.

Nikon D200 + Nikkor 70-200mm f/2.8 @ 150 mm — ¹/1250 sec, f/4.8, ISO 400 — map & image data — nearby photos
Boys Will Be Boys

Anthony and I visited Zak and his 3-and-a-half-year-old son Gen for a day of play, including a trip to the same park in Otsu City that Anthony and Monet played in last week (that I mentioned on my Overwhelmed: an Embarrassment of Riches post).

The two boys spent most of the time playing in the water.

Nikon D200 + Nikkor 70-200mm f/2.8 @ 220 mm — ¹/500 sec, f/4.8, ISO 200 — map & image data — nearby photos
Under a Bridge

Nikon D200 + Nikkor 70-200mm f/2.8 @ 340 mm — ¹/750 sec, f/5, ISO 200 — map & image data — nearby photos
“Let's Go Down There”

Nikon D200 + Nikkor 70-200mm f/2.8 @ 340 mm — ¹/640 sec, f/5, ISO 400 — map & image data — nearby photos
“Hmmm, I Like the Sound of That....”

Nikon D200 + Nikkor 70-200mm f/2.8 @ 165 mm — ¹/1250 sec, f/5, ISO 400 — map & image data — nearby photos

Nikon D200 + Nikkor 70-200mm f/2.8 @ 340 mm — ¹/1250 sec, f/4.8, ISO 400 — map & image data — nearby photos

Nikon D200 + Nikkor 70-200mm f/2.8 @ 180 mm — ¹/1250 sec, f/4.8, ISO 400 — map & image data — nearby photos

Nikon D200 + Nikkor 70-200mm f/2.8 @ 340 mm — ¹/1000 sec, f/4.8, ISO 400 — map & image data — nearby photos

At this point they started to walk away on the path (a path that leads down to a busy street), so I yelled down for them to come back. Three-year-old Gen, being the three-year-old that he is, turned heel and started running away, so I took off down after him.

I was carrying my camera (the non-small Nikon D200 mounted with a big Nikkor 70-200 f/2.8 zoom and a 1.7× teleconverter) all attached to my 8-foot-long monopod, yet I still ran perhaps the fastest I've run in the last 20 years: the GPS unit in my pocket recorded a maximum speed of 29kph. For reference, a four-minute mile is 24kph. (But, of course, I didn't run for a whole mile, and I was also running downhill 🙂 )

On the way back, Anthony showed me some chestnuts he'd been carrying throughout the water play....

Nikon D200 + Nikkor 70-200mm f/2.8 @ 125 mm — ¹/250 sec, f/9, ISO 400 — map & image data — nearby photos

You can see them in his hand in this picture from earlier when he and Gen were playing at the playground and Anthony suggested that they go play in the water in the first place...

Nikon D200 + Nikkor 70-200mm f/2.8 @ 290 mm — ¹/500 sec, f/5.6, ISO 200 — map & image data — nearby photos
“Let's Go Be Naughty Over There”

Zak must have got some nice pictures himself, as he brought along his own focus puller...

Nikon D200 + Nikkor 70-200mm f/2.8 @ 120 mm — ¹/400 sec, f/5.6, ISO 200 — map & image data — nearby photos
Focus Puller in Training
(10-month-old Zoe Tamaki Braverman)

Nikon D200 + Nikkor 70-200mm f/2.8 @ 120 mm — ¹/400 sec, f/5.6, ISO 200 — map & image data — nearby photos